The Silence of the Lapdogs... The mainstream media, with only rare exception, has been completely silent on the recent revelations about Planned Parenthood's baby parts business. Mark Steyn notes this:

When kids are slaughtered in a Connecticut schoolhouse or churchgoers are shot down in Charleston, the media jump straight on the public policy implications: gun control, Confederate flags at state buildings... But when baby parts are sold by an organization that receives half-a-billion in taxpayer funds, there are no public policy questions at all, and it is necessary to look away. Because the realities of abortion have to be crushed and smothered by the slick, blurry evasions of "a woman's right to choose".

Last night, tossing and turning while trying to sleep, my brain wandered to this story. Most especially, I started thinking about what Planned Parenthood's “business” says about American society. The next thought was “Is this really something we want to preserve?”

(Early) morning in Paradise... Miki, Race, and I left on our walk a bit earlier than usual – when there was just barely enough light to see. By the time we got back, the hills to our west were just being brushed with sunlight. On the way back home we had enough light to see well.

The highlight for the dogs was a sudden rustle of motion in the dry barley to our left as we came down the hill. None of us could see whatever it was, so they were on full alert: eyes wide, ears perked, hackles up. After a few seconds of this, a magpie sauntered out, took one look at the three of us, and launched into the air, away from us, squawking his unhappiness. The dogs went bananas :)

The highlight for me was a male American Goldfinch (not my photo at left) whose yellow was about as glorious as its possible for yellow to be. He flew from behind us, around my right shoulder to my left, and landed on a barbed wire fence not 4 feet away. The dogs didn't even notice him. I just stood there, gawking, for close to five minutes until he decided it was time to leave. I was afraid to move, so I didn't get a photo. The dogs thought we were resting, and laid down in the road, luckily for me. What beautiful birds they are!

Speaking of birds... We've been keeping hummingbird feeders out for the past few weeks, and we're now regularly attracting groups feeding at once. The record I've seen at the same time so far is six – not quite the hordes we once had in Jamul, but we gotta start somewhere! Oddly enough, so far I've only seen on male at the feeders, and just one time – all the other sightings have been females. We've also had orioles visiting the feeders, as many as three at once.

Sleeping with an oximeter... Yeah, I never heard of an oximeter before, either. It's a device that measures (and records) two things: pulse rate and percentage of blood oxygen saturation (in other words, how full of oxygen one's blood is). The sensor is the little clippy thing (low in the photo) that goes over a finger. I had a little trouble with that; it only liked my pinky fingers. Last night I strapped that thing to my left pinky finger and slept with it on all night. Today I take the unit back, and the hospital's sleep lab will analyze the results.

Why would I do this? Well, there's a story, of course. When we moved up here to Utah, we (very sadly) left our GP of over 20 years back in San Diego. That meant we had to find a new one up here. I tried hard to find an independent GP, but ObamaCare has effectively wiped them out. I actually did find three of them, but they are not accepting new patients – all three of them are sort of phasing into retirement. That means we had to find a GP associated with a clinic. So I asked several people here I trust for references to GPs – and all of them turned out to have no more room for new patients. Then I gave up and went to the closest clinic to us – in Millville, 8 miles north of us – and asked to be assigned to a GP. We figured that then at least we'd have some sort of access to a GP, and if we didn't like the one assigned, we could then go on a leisurely search for a new one.

So last week I had my first visit with our new GP, Dr. Stephanie Thomas. My first impressions were all good: she was great at answering my questions, looked for ways to help, and got the process of a physical underway (scheduling me for blood work, for instance). She also did asked me some questions that no other GP has ever asked me: she asked how well I slept. Anyone who knows me well knows that I've had trouble getting a good night's sleep my entire adult life. It's rare indeed that I get 8 hours of natural sleep. I have trouble going to sleep. I wake up a lot, and then often have trouble going back to sleep again. I can't sleep if there's any sunlight at all. Any unusual noise will wake me up. If I can hear a TV or radio, I can't go to sleep. And on and on. Anyway, after a few questions, Dr. Thomas said that I should be screened for sleep apnea. The easiest way to do that is to monitor my blood oxygen saturation for a night, which is what the oximeter does.

I'm very curious what the results will show. Many of my sleep issues don't fit the sleep apnea profile at all, though some do. It sure would be nice to sleep better, though...